Penny was confused, her mind trying to reel in with what she understood and she was still trying to process around her. She wondered if it was possible. When her eyes met Damien's questioning ones, she asked him, "Could you tell me what I told you? About going to the doctor's house..."

Damien's eyes tried to gauge what was going on but nonetheless he went to iterate what he had heard from her, "You said you had been to the doctor's house on foot as there was a riot taking place on the main road. Taking a deviation before meeting him. After some time you did mention that you bought the man to the house but it had been too late. Your mother's health was quickly deteriorating. What happened, Penelope? Speak," he demanded looking at her. There was a heap of confusion that filled up her eyes. 

"If my mother is alive. Is she a witch like me?" asked Penny without answering what Damien was asking. Damien's mouth twisted, taking in a deep breath he released to say,

"Yes," Penny nodded her head. Not because she understood what was being told but she was still working on understanding why her mother would die to come back again. If she were a witch along with her father, why had she failed to mention it to her? Was it not important to know who she was or what she was to be precise. It felt as if she had been living a life of lie where she had no clue, "But she isn't the same as you," her eyes looked up at him with a frown. 

"What do you mean?" her heart started to thud back. 

"I don't know how far it is true but there's rumored lore which hasn't been proven until now. When a white witch dies to reincarnate herself, her body decomposes like any other body that has to decay to turn one with the land she had stepped on to. But this doesn't hold the same for the black witch. When the black witch dies, her body starts to decay and if it is the reincarnation the body doesn't decay one bit because they make use of the same body."

"...she's a black witch," Penny finally came down to the conclusion. Her body suddenly turning cold as if someone had thrown a bucket of water on her. 

Damien hadn't planned to tell her this early. After all, she was still learning things around her but keeping it as a secret wasn't going to benefit anyone. Not to him, not to her. The sooner the information to be out in the air the better it was. With Penny's mother who was a black witch and her father who was a white witch, things had truly taken to another turn but there was something more to the story right now. 

Penny, on the other hand, wondered what to do. She had the least expectation of her parents being part of the creatures who people despised on a daily basis. She herself had turned out to be a white witch which she thought was the most she could be shocked but with her mother being a black witch, she didn't know what to conclude the life she had lived so far. 

"What if the lore is false and untrue. Somethings are only made up to change the course of her person's mind."

"You don't mean to say the white witches are on the wrong. That would be a plot twist in the history of the witches," he commented to see her shake her head. 

"No, that is not what I mean..." the person she had loved and whom she had been loved back, her mother who had pa.s.sed away, how could she be a black witch? Black witches were not known to be good. Throughout the years, it was mentioned over and over again in the history of books on how vile the black witches were. Hunting, killing, cutting people for their own use of the potions and the lack of understanding on how to co-exist with the others. Penny then realized there was Bathsheba who was helping her or helping only because of Damien, "My mother was a good woman."

Damien didn't know if the girl was trying to a.s.sure him or a.s.sure herself after finding out about her mother. Not being subtle in the slightest, he said, 

"Black witches are not to be trusted. You might be a good actress with chiseling the skill over the months but they, the black witches are born to be sweet talkers to get what they want," he saw Penny get upset over his words.

She went to defend, "You do not know my mother, Master Damien. If you haven't met her you shouldn't be so quick to judge."

"You will be surprised to know the amount of time I have been right. Truth is bitter and it hurts but it is what it is. You cannot change it." 

"Maybe but to be too quick to judge it isn't fair. Bathsheba might be a witch but you take her help because you have placed the unknowing trust in her.

If you didn't you wouldn't have taken her there." 

Damien laughed at what she said, "Is that what it seems like? Oh, little mouse. Her neck loosely hangs in my hands where I can rip it off at any time. The woman knows to keep favor which I have granted so generously," he stood up from the bed where Penny had to raise her head up to look at Damien as she sat on the bed, "There are a few laws in nature like the sun rises from the east. The birds fly during the time of cold. Things that have been going on for years which you cannot change. Unless you turn out to be a powerful witch where you can change the very law which has been laid down for all of us. The vampires live on blood no matter how many other delicacies of food they eat. Humans' downfall is the very spark of greed that lights up in their hearts and the witches who are never to be trusted, especially the black witch." 

"You don't trust me either," Penny confronted him.

"White witches maybe but the black witches no. And when it comes to you, you are the only exception I take and no one else gets that exception," he replied with the same vigor as her. 

How was she supposed to reply to that? Every time he spoke anything about her, he left words where he appreciated her, making her feel special over and over again. This pureblooded vampire claimed to have fallen for her, how much was it true?

"Don't judge me, Penelope," Damien was very good at reading facial expressions that pa.s.sed by. Be it humans, vampires or the witches, he had the skill to read and decipher what was going on on their mind, "Would you like me to show you how to dedicated I can be?" he placed his knee and one hand on the bed to have his face in front of hers. Going back to the subject which had been raised since they arrived back, he pulled back slightly to ask her, 

"Why did you want me to repeat things you told me yourself?" he asked her. 

Penny gulped softly, trying to wet her lips which had dried, "Do witches have the power to erase memory?" Damien's brows furrowed hearing this. 

"What was the memory that was missing?" he asked her.

She recollected back what she had gone through in her mind, "I didn't realize it before but some of my memories are missing. They aren't blurry because of the time that has pa.s.sed but because they had been removed."

"Missing memories? Never heard of it before. Going to Bathsheba right now is not feasible and we will have to hold our trip there for some time until the witch hunter decides to leave. Though there is one person who might help us. The problem is that she never takes visitors," he said thinking about the witch who the council kept an eye on while also taking her help, "What were the missing fragments?"  

"I didn't notice it before but there are blank s.p.a.ces now as I try to remember them. A lot of blank s.p.a.ces."

"Since when?"

"Before my mother pa.s.sed away," Penny refused to believe that her mother had anything to do with it after all she was the only person she was in contact with. Or had she done it for her own good? This only made her question more and she heard Damien ask,

"You might not like to hear it but it appears that your mother tampered your memories without fixing it and letting it be. My guess is that after your ability got triggered, there must have been some changes that took place in your body that opened the locked memory which you had forgotten and had no access to."

Penny tried to remember the time before and after meeting the doctor. She remembered going to the doctor's house. Knocking on the door as she tapped the metal that was nailed on the main door of the house. But the more she tried to remember the farther the memories turned out to be. She couldn't remember what happened after knocking the door which daunted her more than anything.

Why wasn't she able to remember anything?! 

Suddenly she felt Damien's hand on her own hand, "Calm down," and upon his one word, her heart started to go back to its normal state, "Don't panic. You are here safe and whatever that was removed from your memory will return but in time. Okay?"

Penny nodded her head, "Master Damien?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you think I will be able to see her again? My mother."

"Yeah, I guess."